Corrections Corporation of America

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, is the largest for-profit prison corporation in the U.S.  CCA runs over 60 prisons in about 20 U.S. states plus Washington, DC. CCA has contracts with all three federal corrections agencies (Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement), nearly half of all states and more than a dozen local municipalities. It is the fifth-largest corrections system in the U.S., with only the federal government and three states having larger prison systems. The company trades on the New York Stock Exchange with the symbol CXW. In 2006, revenue was $1.3 billion with profits of $105 million.

In May, 2011, Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin was hired as Executive Vice President and Chief Corrections Officer of CCA.

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
CCA has long been a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Laurie Shanblum, the Senior Director of Partnership Development for CCA, has been a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) since 2003 and is currently on the Public Safety and Elections Task Force as a member of its Executive Committee. She is also on that task force's Homeland Security Subcommittee.

"Corporate-Sponsored Crime Laws"
In 2002, American Radio Works aired a report on ALEC, CCA, and crime laws. The report notes that the Public Safety and Elections Task Force, of which CCA is a member: . . . writes the group's "model" bills on crime and punishment. Until recently, a CCA official even co-chaired the task force. For years, ALEC's criminal justice committee has promoted state laws letting private prison companies operate. And at least since the early 1990s, it has pushed a tough-on-crime agenda. ALEC officials say proudly that lawmakers on the group's crime task force led the drive for more incarceration in the states — "and really took the forefront in promoting those ideals and then taking them into their states and talking to their colleagues and getting their colleagues to understand that if, you know, we want to reduce crime we have to get these guys off the streets," says ALEC staffer and Criminal Justice Task Force director Andrew LeFevre. Among ALEC's model bills: mandatory minimum sentences; Three Strikes laws, giving repeat offenders 25 years to life in prison; and "truth-in-sentencing," which requires inmates to serve most or all of their time without a chance for parole. ALEC didn't invent any of these ideas but has played a pivotal role in making them law in the states, says Bender of the National Institute on Money in State Politics. "By ALEC's own admission in its 1995 Model Legislation Scorecard, they were very successful. They had introduced 199 bills [that year]. The Truth-in-Sentencing Act had become law in 25 states, so that right there is fairly significant." By the late 1990s, about forty states had passed versions of truth-in sentencing similar to ALEC's model bill. Because of truth-in-sentencing and other tough sentencing measures, state prison populations grew by half a million inmates in the 1990s even while crime rates fell dramatically. The result: more demand for private prison companies like CCA.

The American Radio Works report goes on to discuss a case study in Wisconsin: In Wisconsin, a group of lawmakers led passage of truth-in-sentencing in 1998. "Many of us, myself included, were part of ALEC," says the bill's author, Republican state representative Scott Walker. "Clearly ALEC had proposed model legislation," Walker recalls. "And probably more important than just the model legislation, [ALEC] had actually put together reports and such that showed the benefits of truth-in-sentencing and showed the successes in other states. And those sorts of statistics were very helpful to us when we pushed it through, when we passed the final legislation." But a former head of Wisconsin's prison system, Walter Dickey — now a University of Wisconsin Law Professor — says he finds it "shocking" that lawmakers would write sentencing policy with help from ALEC, a group that gets funding and, supposedly, expertise, from a private prison corporation. "I don't know that they know anything about sentencing," Dickey says. "They know how to build prisons, presumably, since that's the business they're in. They don't know anything about probation and parole. They don't know about the development of alternatives. They don't know about how public safety might be created and defended in communities in this state and other states."

Alleged Connections to Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Law
A National Public Radio (NPR) report from October 2010 suggested that CCA, through ALEC, was also responsible for Arizona's infamous anti-immigrant law SB1070.

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country. . . But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room.

It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.

It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.

It was there that Pearce's idea took shape."

The report continued:

The 50 or so people in the room included officials of the Corrections Corporation of America, according to two sources who were there.

Pearce and the Corrections Corporation of America have been coming to these meetings for years. Both have seats on one of several of ALEC's boards.

And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in "a significant portion of our revenues" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.

In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it.

"There were no 'no' votes," Pearce said. "I never had one person speak up in objection to this model legislation."

Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law.

The report also mentions that the same week Pearce's bill was introduced, CCA hired a new lobbyist for the capitol, and that thirty of the 36 bill co-sponsors received donations over the next six months, from prison lobbyists or prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation and The Geo Group.

CCA denied ever lobbying on immigration law.

Lobbying
CCA spent $970,000 for federal lobbying in 2010. In-house lobbyists and four outside lobbying firms were used. This was a decline from the years 2004-2007, when lobbying expenditures were between $2 and $3 million per year.

In the first quarter of 2011, CCA spent $290,000 on lobbying, employing what the Center for Responsive Politics calls "32 well-connected federal lobbyists."

Political contributions
Corrections Corporation of America gave $68,750 to federal candidates in the 2010 election cycle through its political action committee - 56% to Republicans and 44% to Democrats.

Its contributions to state candidates was concentrated in California, Florida, and to lesser degree, Georgia; according to a Justice Policy Institute Report, CCA gave $1 million in these three states between 2003 and 2010 accounting for 2/3 of its total state-level giving.

Personnel
Key people:
 * John D. Ferguson, Chairman
 * Damon Hininger, President, CEO and Director
 * Todd Mullenger, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Officers:
 * Damon Hininger, President and Chief Executive Officer
 * Dennis Bradby, Vice President, Inmate Programs, formerly with the Virginia Department of Corrections in a variety of management positions
 * Steven Conry, Vice President, Facility Operations, Business Unit 3
 * David Garfinkle, Vice President, Finance and Controller, former Senior Manager at KPMG Peat Marwick LLP
 * Louise Grant, Vice President, Communications
 * Lucibeth Mayberry, Vice President and Deputy Chief Development Officer
 * Natasha Metcalf, Vice President, Partnership Development
 * John Pfeiffer, Vice President, Technology and Chief Information Officer
 * J. Michael Quinlan, Senior Vice President
 * Brad Regens, Vice President, Partnership Relations
 * Herb Spiwak, Vice President, Health Services
 * Daren Swensen, Vice President, Facility Operations, Business Unit 2
 * Patrick Swindle, Vice President, Treasury
 * Ron Thompson, Vice President, Facility Operations, Business Unit 1
 * Jimmy Turner, Vice President, Facility Human Resources
 * Bart VerHulst, Vice President, Partnership Relations

Board of Directors:
 * John D. Ferguson, Chairman of Board, Former Commissioner of Finance and Administration for the State of Tennessee
 * Donna M. Alvarado, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense
 * William F. Andrews, Chairman of Executive Committee
 * John D. Correnti, Member of Audit Committee, CEO of SteelCorr, Inc.
 * Dennis DeConcini, former U.S. Senator from Arizona
 * Damon Hininger, President and Chief Executive Officer
 * John R. Horne, Board of Trustees of Manufacturer's Alliance/MAPI
 * C. Michael Jacobi, Former President and Chief Executive Officer of Timex Corporation
 * Thurgood Marshall, Jr., son of the historic Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, former Cabinet Secretary to President Clinton
 * Charles L. Overby, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Freedom Forum
 * John R. Prann, Jr., Former President and CEO of Katy Industries, Inc.
 * Joseph V. Russell, President and CFO of Elan-Polo, Inc.
 * Henri L. Wedell, Private investor in Memphis, Tenn.

Contact
10 Burton Hills Boulevard Nashville, TN 37215 Phone: (615) 263-3000; (800) 624-2931 Fax: (615) 263-3140 Web: http://www.cca.com

Related SourceWatch articles

 * American Correctional Association
 * Correctionalnews.com
 * Federal Prison Industries
 * Global detention system
 * National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center
 * Prison-industrial complex
 * Private Federal Corporation
 * Privatization

External articles
CORRECTIONS CORPORATION OF AMERICA] (pdf)
 * Barry Yeoman, "Steel-Town Lockdown", Mother Jones, May/June 2000.
 * Ken Silverstein, "America's Private Gulag", Prison Legal News/CorpWatch, June 1, 2000.
 * Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale, [http://www.yaleunions.org/geso/reports/CCAreport.pdf Endowing Injustice: YALE UNIVERSITY’S INVESTMENT IN